Housework…..your worst nightmare as a vestibular sufferer or a bit of therapy? There is one thing I have not stopped during my vestibular condition battles and that is housework. Despite finding the simplest of tasks an issue, a weird part of me finds housework rather therapeutic. Somehow feeling that I am dusting away my issues, clearing out the cobwebs and having a clean and tidy house is good for the soul.

However doing housework with a vestibular condition/s is rather challenging. Below is a little list of what I have found challenging! I would love to hear what your challenges are if you suffer from vestibular condition/s….

Hoovering – well the main issue here is the noise, my ears never used to be able to tolerate hoovers, especially my noisy Dyson, when are they going to bring out a silent version!? There is quite a sharp pitch to the noise, which in the bad days used to put in a spin and I did actually have to limit usage and put up with the tumbleweed of cat hair across the dirty floor for a while!

Household cleaners – I used to find some household cleaners terrible to use, they used to give me bad migraines, mostly the ones which were very fragrant.

Bending down to pick up items off the floor – If you have children you will know you do this often! My children have the lovely habit of leaving a trail of destruction across, not just their bedroom but pretty much the entire house! So inevitably I havr to pick up all their belongings, this results in head spins as I went up and down, I am a tall lady so my head has to travel quite far up and down!! Once I even use a children’s pincer toy (like a road litter persons claw thingy) it made things easier for a while!

Unloading and loading the dishwasher – a task which some people take for granted, but throw in some dizziness and vertigo attacks and taking a plates out of a box puts me in a spin. My brain has got used to this motion now that I have done it about 1,100 times in the last 5 years! Practice makes perfect….

Walking around the house cleaning or hoovering! When I used to have the aid of a walking stick just in case I was wobbly or needed to get across my lounge, walking around the house cleaning or hoovering was a big job. Before having my conditions I used to run up and down the stairs, hoover and mop very quickly with short sharp actions etc But all that stopped, I had to do things extra slowly, if you can picture a sloth with a hoover then that is what I was like. Pre conditions it used to take me hardly any time to whip around the house like Mary Poppins but then bang…..3 hours to do one room!

This is not to do with HOUSEWORK but more external cleaning, every year I used to clean our patio with a high pressure hose. Something I cannot do now! It leaves me with severe dizziness and headaches for 2 weeks after! I also cannot use a electric toothbrush…..so hence why my patio is green and my teeth are yellow! (I really do clean my teeth but just manually!)

I would be so interested to hear what your housework issues are if you have a vestibular condition, I have listed the main ones above. Lucky for me as soon as my children were old enough to use a hoover, dustpan and brush and dust for me I put them to work!

Lara x

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Mummy to beautiful twin girls, sufferer of vestibular migraines, neuritis and anxiety, Pilates addict and clean eating freak! I have started a blog writing about my experiences thus far! Hoping to give people hope who suffer from vestibular conditions and mental illness. I hope you like reading my blogs and would love to hear from you!